90% of CMOs are experimenting with AI but fewer than 10% have scaled it or realized value across marketing workflows

Workflow & automation

Reader Note:: The gap between the two numbers is the whole claim, and all three of its terms are undefined: what counts as experimenting, what counts as having scaled, and what counts as having realised value. From a McKinsey global survey of marketers in March 2026 whose sample size is not given on this page. A nine-to-one ratio between trying and succeeding is the kind of figure that moves fast, so it dates quickly.
Evidence:: Self-reported behaviour
Vendor interest:: High — This comes from a company with a commercial interest in this market, so it is not a neutral source.
Sample:: Mixed source. The article combines several McKinsey surveys and case examples, including an AI Discovery Survey (August 2025, n=1,927), a McKinsey Global Survey on marketers (March 2026, n=521), and a McKinsey Global Survey on marketing executives (May 2026, n=26). Selection details are not disclosed in the article.

Good for

A rough sense of size and direction, and deciding what to look at first.

Exact numbers, or saying that one thing caused another.
This comes from a company with a commercial interest in this market, so it is not a neutral source.
This is an aggregated or average number that covers very different cases. Real results in a particular segment may differ.
The source never says how this number was measured.
The source says how much it looked at, but not how any of it was chosen.

10%

of organisations are realising significant ROI from agentic AI in Deloitte’s 2025 survey of 1,854 EMEA executives

42.3%

of wrong AI answers were overridden with incentives and item-level feedback in Study 3 versus 20.0% in the control group

90%

of surveyed CPG brands said AI will deliver long-term value in their influencer marketing programs

Our Substack turns the data behind these cards into full breakdowns: what changed, why, and what to do about it.

14%

average increase in sales productivity reported from using AI in marketing by US companies (2026 survey)

77% of brands say AI-assisted influencer campaigns perform better

24–56%

of marketing tasks are currently performed using AI or ML, rising to over half in three years according to US CMOs (2026 survey)